


The Wake Up Knock

by pipisafoat



Series: Abby Lyman [17]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Canon Disabled Character, Disability, Disabled Character, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Service Animals, Service Dog Gear, Service Dogs, invisible disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: Josh cuts through the tape and is about to open the box when Donna stops him.“You shouldn’t open mail that isn’t addressed to you, Josh. It’s a felony, you know,” she scolds him with humor clear on her face.He did actually know that. “Abby!”The collie comes flying in the bedroom with the toy in her mouth but drops it to stare attentively at Josh. “I’m being your thumbs,” he tells her.





	The Wake Up Knock

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT NOTE/WARNING: short but graphic description of PTSD flashback, which includes light violence and gore. Also sexual innuendo & erections.

He’s started the coffee but hasn’t yet turned on the TV when there’s a knock on his door. He’s reaching for the doorknob when he suddenly remembers his state of undress; he looks down, runs a hand over his body, and winces. Morning wood. He glances rapidly around the room, and his eyes alight on the throw pillows on his couch. When he’d first moved into this apartment, he’d given his decorator the side eye at the idea of throw pillow, but he’s quickly coming around to them. Very quickly. “Just a minute!” he calls belatedly over his shoulder, striding to the couch and grabbing the first pillow he lays his hands on before returning to the door.

“Nice pillow,” Donna remarks with barely concealed humor. “Can I have your mailbox key?”

He looks down at the pillow and feels himself redden instantly. Of course he’d grab the one gag gift out of all the normal pillows; he’s covering an inappropriate erection with a pillow with his face on it and the words ‘I’m With Stupid.’ “Sam did it,” he blurts, blushing even more when he realizes that could be taken as his best friend causing the erection.

Donna laughs outright, nudging Josh to the side and entering his apartment. “I was at that holiday party,” she reminds him. “Mailbox key?”

“I’ll give it to you if you take Abby out to potty,” he offers, letting the door shut behind him.

“Potty, Josh?”

His face, not yet recovered from the pillow blushing, turns an even brighter red. “Yes, potty. That’s her word, not mine. I don’t go potty, okay?” He squeezes his eyes shut and debates for a moment the necessity of him ever speaking again in his life. “Look, she knows go potty and go poop. Get her to do both before you come back in.” He turns to the table beside the door - and not the key hooks above the table - and uses both hands to paw through a bowl of keys, candy, and trash until he finds the spare set he wants. “Mailbox key, apartment key, building key,” he says, showing Donna each in turn. “Um, are you okay?”

She snatches the keys from his hand and snaps her eyes up to somewhere around his left shoulder. “You, uh, you dropped your pillow when you went hunting for keys,” she reports with a blush stealing over her features.

Oh God. Josh glances down as though he needs to verify that the pillow is gone. He was using both hands to look for the keys, and the offending pillow - which may need to be burned now - is on the floor under that table. His blue plaid boxers are there for all the world to see, but at least they still contain the erection tenting them out without exposing it. As he stares in embarrassment at it, stuck on the fact that Donna was looking at it, it twitches and gets even harder.

“Maybe we should pretend this never happened?” he suggests, voice impressively high in his chagrin.

“Yes!” Donna replies, louder than strictly necessary. The red on her face is slipping down her neck. “You get in a warm shower and, uh … take care of things. I’ll take Abby for a nice long walk, maybe 20 minutes? Is that long enough?”

Josh yanks his attention from watching the red spreading down her chest, suddenly grateful for her promotion so he isn’t perving on his assistant. “Yeah. That’s good. And uh, just let yourself back in, that’s fine. Abby!” he calls as he turns to hurry into the shower and end his humiliation. “Wake up and come see Donna!”

Donna has never been less than punctual, and so she continues today. Josh hears the keys in the door as he’s drying off, and Abby’s using his new door knobs to let herself in the bathroom as he pulls his pants on over solid red boxers - he chose the ones the looked the least like his morning’s embarrassment. He stares at the empty bit of counter where his boxers had been, digs under his shirt on its hanger, and sighs heavily when he comes up empty. No undershirt. He’s always been the big picture kind of guy, the kind who needs help when it comes to details like the parts of an outfit that aren’t seen. This wouldn’t have happened if Donna had laid out his clothes, he’s sure. He grabs the suit coat and shirt by the hangers and heads back into his bedroom, gratified to find it empty. Abby prances along with him.

“Did you have a good walk with Donna?” he asks his dog as he hangs his clothes from the dresser drawer handle and opens it in search of an undershirt. She spins in circles, chasing her tail, and he decides to take that as a yes. “Did she make you potty and poop?”

“She did— I’m sorry!” Donna interrupts herself from the doorway as Josh turns quickly at the sound. Abby lets go of her tail and presses solidly against his leg; he drops a hand to the top of her head to ground himself against the startle reflex and bring his heart rate back to normal. He holds up one finger, asking Donna to wait while he works on that slice of his health.

“Okay,” he says softly, removing his hand from Abby’s head. “Freedom.”

“I’m sorry,” Donna repeats. “I heard you talking to Abby and thought you were dressed. I didn’t mean to come in on you exposed again or to trigger that reaction.”

Josh feels his face flush as he glances down at his shirtless body again, scar shining silver against the tanned muscles he’s worked so hard to rebuild with his physical and occupational therapists. He’s proud of the muscles, but he could do without accidentally flaunting his scar. “I forgot to bring an undershirt into the bathroom,” he explains, waving the undershirt already in his hand to emphasize the situation.

Donna, as it turns out, isn’t much better than Josh at concealing interest - or that’s what he thinks for the first moments of her gaze fixed solidly on his chest. “Your scar looks pretty good,” she remarks, and he feels his certainty in her sexual interest plummet.

He looks down, as much to hide his confusion as to respond to her words. He sees his bare chest in the mirror at least once a day, usually more, but he hasn’t really looked at the scar in months. The silver maybe isn’t as noticeable as he thought a minute ago, and the surgical scars are all small. “Yeah,” he agrees, but then his attention comes back to the actual bullet scar, large and bleeding and—

Abby nudges Josh’s leg three times. He takes a deep breath, unsurprised when it shudders through him unsteadily. She nudges him again.

“Let’s drop that topic and get you dressed,” Donna offers.

Abby nudges him again, and he remembers to breathe again, another unsteady shuddering affair. “She’s pretty insistent,” he wheezes, and then he drops his hands onto his knees and bends over where he’s standing, gasping for breath like he was just punched in the diaphragm. He’s vaguely aware of Abby leaning against his left leg, nuzzling his hands and face, soon joined by Donna’s hand on his bare back.

“Do you need to sit?” Donna asks, and he wonders how he didn’t think of that before; his legs can’t hold him up much longer. He lets himself collapse where he is, lets Donna’s hands and sound of worry guide him to safety.

He’s sitting on concrete with no warning. There’s a moment, maybe a full second, of pain-free curiosity and concern - How’s the President? Leo? CJ, Sam, Toby, Mandy? Everyone else? - but in the blink of an eye there’s a shooting pain in his side. His hands fly to cover it, to hold his innards where they belong, but a hand is trying to pull him apart. He moves his head to look at it, but instead there’s a blur of fur. A warm body drapes itself over his legs, a wet nose nudges his chest, a human hand still tugging at his own hands.

“Good girl,” a voice says behind him as the wet nose becomes a tongue bathing his face. Josh sacrifices one of his gunshot hands to push the dog’s head away and hold it there, fingers twined through the long fur. He somehow doesn’t leave tracks of blood on her. He turns toward the voice to ask for help; he’s bleeding from a gunshot wound, and that definitely earns him some assistance from a stranger. Except when he looks, it’s not a stranger. Donna is hovering over him, but it can’t be Donna. She didn’t go to Rosslyn with him. The dog tongue comes back, and he welcomes it this time, because he didn’t have Abby then. Just like that, the fog lifts in his brain. He knows the actual date today, knows it isn’t the date of the Rosslyn shooting. He remembers all of what happened at Rosslyn, knows he and the President and everyone else are all physically fine.

He sighs, a deep sigh that carries some of his muscle tension away with it. “Thanks,” he tells the two most important women in his life without looking at either of them.

“Always,” Donna whispers as she unfolds herself. She rises with one last caress of his bare back and offers him a hand up from the floor. He takes it without hesitation. His muscles are still locked up from the panic attack, from the flashback. Donna pulls him up with more force than he was expecting; he stumbles a few steps and has to grab her around the waist to keep her from falling. He savors the feel of her against his naked chest for a moment before releasing her.

“I should get dressed,” he mutters, bending to retrieve his undershirt from the floor. He doesn’t remember dropping it.

“I, uh….” Donna trails off. “I could help Miss Abigail Ann Bartlet Lyman open this package addressed to her.”

Josh laughs as he turns back to dresser to get his shirt from the hanger. “No way that’s how it’s addressed.”

She scoops up the box from the floor by the bedroom door and brings it over to him as he buttons his shirt. “It’s real,” she confirms in the same tone she uses for the minutiae of oddball facts that he’s never heard before (but certainly doesn’t doubt; he just questions why she knows them and why she thinks he needs to know them).

He retrieves his suit coat and reads the box with coat in hand. “Okay then,” he replies, clearly amused at the addressing. “You want to help me pick out a tie? Then you can tell me why you’re here.”

“I’m here for this package,” she informs him, “but if I can help improve your dress sense, that’s just gravy.”

He waves vaguely in the direction of his closet, unsurprised to find his arm a little shaky and a little heavy. “Go for it.” He wanders out to his living room in search of a pair of scissors while Donna goes through his ties. Abby follows him into the room with one of her squeaky toys firmly in her mouth and starts tossing it in the air and chasing it down. She’s still entertaining herself when Josh finally finds the scissors.

Josh cuts through the tape and is about to open the box when Donna stops him.

“You shouldn’t open mail that isn’t addressed to you, Josh. It’s a felony, you know,” she scolds him with humor clear on her face.

He did actually know that. “Abby!”

The collie comes flying in the bedroom with the toy in her mouth but drops it to stare attentively at Josh. “I’m being your thumbs,” he tells her, setting the box on the floor and opening the flaps to expose … something red and a bunch of packing paper. He grabs one end of paper and wiggles it at the excited dog, who grabs it immediately and backs up, tugging it out of the box. The paper is long enough that there are only two pieces, and Josh feels his mouth drop open as Abby’s tugging reveals the true contents of the box.

As the dog starts shredding the paper, Josh lifts the red object out of the box to confirm it’s what he thinks. It’s a new vest for Abby, this time one with pockets. It’s red with black edging and red thread on top of the edging. The hardware is all sturdy plastic, so it can go through the metal detectors without issue. The pockets are three dimensional, able to hold actual items instead of just paper, and when he opens one he finds that it has flat mesh zippered pockets inside perfect for any papers he still needs her to carry. There’s a plastic clip for his keys, too. There’s space in here for everything he can think of. One pocket probably needs to be reserved for Abby’s other gear and treats and the like, but if she can just carry his emergency medications all the time, he can stop stressing out about forgetting them again.

He flips it around and opens the other pocket. It has all the same features, but this one has something in it. A soft rope with some small things woven into it sits in his hands. He opens his mouth but closes it straight away. He’ll get to the whatever that is in a minute. First, he wants to fully explore this vest.

“Why is there velcro underneath the ‘SERVICE DOG’ patches?” he asks, fully expecting a stream of useless knowledge.

Instead, Donna smiles mysteriously. “Look in the first pocket again,” she instructs.

He sweeps his hand through the entire saddlebag instead of just looking at the features near the top. Several patches come out, all with the hook side of Velcro on them.

“I wasn’t sure exactly what you had in mind, but these were the ones you had bookmarked on your laptop,” Donna explains as Josh continues to stare.

“You looked at my bookmarks?” he asks, more impressed than upset. Not upset at all, if he’s honest.

Donna laughs. “It’s not the first time, Josh.”

He shrugs, accepting that without looking too closely at it. Probably how he finally got the pill holder that attaches to his key ring, at least. “So … you bought all this for me?”

“You paid for it,” she replies hurriedly. “But yes, I did all the work finding everything, getting the custom order vest imagined and sketched, finding a good seamstress, and finding the patches. I even had to be the one to get it out of the mailbox,” she teases him.

“Hey, I opened the box,” he returns with a grin. “So wait, what I’m hearing is that if I forget my mail long enough - which we both know I do all the time - a beautiful blonde will come get it for me?”

“Next time, I’ll leave your mail and only bring Abby’s,” she retorts, then asks in a much softer, vulnerable voice, “You think I’m beautiful?”

Josh laughs nervously and runs a hand through his hair. “I, uh, I was pretty sure the cat was out of the bag on that one. Especially after earlier, when you got here. But, I mean, uh, yeah. I know you’re beautiful.”

Donna doesn’t look at him, doesn’t answer him. She fiddles with the remaining piece of packing paper for a long moment.

“Abby, come!” Josh calls to get past the awkwardness. The dog abandons her mess of paper immediately and joins the pair of humans, sitting at Josh’s side in her ready position. “Stand,” Josh commands. “Good girl. Stay.”

He sets the vest on her and adjusts its positioning, but it’s Donna who fastens the straps and adjusts them. Josh leans in to test the fit and double check that there none of Abby’s long hairs caught in the buckles, but of course it’s done perfectly. He thinks, not for the first time, that Donna would make a better handler than him, except for the part where she’s not the one with disabilities.

“Which patches do you want to put on?” Donna asks, and Josh isn’t sure if she caught the direction his thoughts were going and interrupted on purpose or if it was just a lucky accident. He turns his attention to the patches she’s handing him regardless.

They’re all the same size and all on a white background. One says EMERGENCY MEDS in red and has a gold caduceus on either side of the text, one says NOT ALL DISABILITIES ARE VISIBLE on two lines with the gold caduceus on either side, and the third says I’M CUTE BUT I’M WORKING in black. The final patch has no text but four symbols: the first symbol is a black hand reaching to pet a black dog head with a red circle around it and a red line through it, the second symbol is a black and silver camera in the same red circle with line, the third symbol is an eye with the red circle and line, and the final symbol is a speech bubble with the red circle and line. Don’t touch, take pictures of, stare at, or talk to my dog, Josh mentally translates. He likes all of the patches Donna got, but this is by far his favorite. “This one on her left side, so people can see it when they approach us, and then EMERGENCY MEDS on her right side so it’s there if needed,” he decides, handing those patches back to Donna and holding the other two, at a bit of a loss as to where he should put them.

“Do you want to carry those so you can change them any time, or maybe leave them on top of Abby’s crate?” Donna asks, and Josh nods.

“I’ll put them on her crate.” He never closes the crate, but Abby likes to nap in there sometimes and spends most nights in it, so he hasn’t gotten rid of it. He stands up as Donna starts attaching the Velcro patches in their reserved spots. “Stay,” he reminds Abby as he circles the bed and sets the extra patches on top, glad for the blanket draped over the crate that ensures they won’t fall through the gaps in the wire.

“I’m going to get your book bag to load up Abby’s pockets,” Donna announces as Josh turns to come back to them.

“Come back here with it,” he says to her back as she leaves the bedroom. He fishes the rope out of Abby’s pocket while she’s gone, and looks up at her from his kneeling position as she returns not a minute later, his bag slung over her shoulder. “Abby, freedom. What’s this rope?”

Donna smiles brightly and sets his bag on the floor. “Hands-free leash. Come here.” He rises and walks toward her, new leash in hand. She takes it from him as he stops just in front of her. “One end clips to Abby, of course, and the other end can attach to any of these three D rings.” She drapes the leash over his shoulder and steps in close to grab the end behind his back; Josh keeps his breathing calm and any reaction off of his face. “This D ring lets you use it over your shoulder,” she explains, clipping it and taking her hands away for a moment before unclipping it and reaching around him again to wrap it around his waist, under his suit coat. “I wasn’t sure if shoulder or waist would be better in a suit,” she remarks as she clips it to the second D ring, “so I got you both options. The last D ring is here.” She grasps the leash right in front of his belt buckle and shows Josh its location. “If you clip it there, it just makes a loop to hold on to like it’s a regular leash.”

He nods and slowly steps back. “Donnatella Moss, you are amazing,” he says with feeling.”The vest is everything I wanted, and I didn’t even know I needed the leash until you explained it.”

She shrugs with pink cheeks. “I got used to anticipating your needs when I was an assistant. If I can use that skill now to help you and Abby, all the better.”

“Thank you,” he says emphatically. “Also, you’re beautiful and amazing, and you should hear that at least once a day.” He watches her blush spread down her neck and wrenches his gaze back to her eyes when he catches himself wondering what else he can say to keep it spreading.

“You’re welcome,” she responds simply. “Now, your atrocious bag?” She bends to retrieve it and crosses to the bed, where she pulls out all of the papers and folders and sets them in a pile beside her new seat. “Get up here and sort through this stack.”

Josh smiles and doesn’t offer a complaint, perching on the bed beside Donna. He plants a hand between them and leans forward to see what she’s going through. “Maybe I need to put a trash can in my bag,” he offers apologetically. Donna’s digging through months of receipts and food wrappers to find Abby’s things and the occasional dollar bill.

“Maybe you need to avail yourself of the trash cans on the streets and in your office,” she returns. “Papers, Josh.”

It’s the work of a moment to pull out three daily schedules and deem the rest either currently useful or in need of shredding before trashing. He leans over and grabs the trashcan under his nightstand for Donna, who smiles her thanks as she upends his bag into it. He takes the book bag once she’s done shaking scraps out of it and slides the papers and folders in. When she turns next to smoothing out the money she found, he unzips the inner pocket and sets his wallet on her lap.

“Abby!”

The collie, still wearing her vest, appears almost instantly, sitting in front of Josh expectantly. He runs a critical eye over her, pleased to note that her vest hasn’t slipped out of place. “Back. Back. Good. Stay.” He plants a hand next to Donna’s hip and leans around her back to grab Abby’s things, unconcerned when his chest presses against Donna during his reach. She doesn’t move away from him, and he doesn’t do anything not strictly necessary to reach Abby’s belongings, but he still slides the sensation of touching her in a new way into a little file in his mind.

He drops to his knees in front of Abby and unzips the bag that has the patch with symbols on it. He slips in her collapsible bowl, two ziplock bags of meals portioned out already, a bag of treats, a spare roll of poop bags, and her freshly loaded poop bag dispenser. There’s still room in the bag, to his surprise, but he closes it again. He has to nudge her to turn a bit until he’s able to reach the bag that will be between the two of them when she’s working with him. Donna taps his head and holds out the three medication bottles he’s supposed to carry at all times, then the pill holder that has two doses of his regular meds, then a pack of crackers she must have found in his bag, then his wallet.

“Really?”

“What’s less likely to be stolen from, a bag on your back that you leave in unfortunate places all the time or a bag on your service dog who’s always with you?”

He laughs silently but slides the wallet into Abby’s bag. “Got a spare pen?” Donna hands him one quickly, and he slides it into the mesh pocket and zips it back up. No more presidential scoldings for forgetting to put a pen in his shirt pocket when he gets to work.

He zips the bags and wiggles the vest on his dog, checking for balance to ensure it won’t slide uncomfortably during the day or hurt her back. He notices Donna leave the room during this but stays focused on Abby. When he’s finally satisfied, he sits back on his heels and rubs her ears as a reward for putting up with his fumbling. She wags her tail, and Josh can tell what she wants - and he can’t deny her. “Kiss,” he says with a smile, snapping his mouth shut immediately as a warm tongue licks his cheek from jaw to hair.

“That was so sweet,” Donna says from the doorway in the voice she uses for things like him wearing shoes his mother bought him.

“And it better not become office gossip,” he warns her, not moving from his position as a wagging Abby presses closer for more pets.

“When I could use it against you in private for greater benefit? I thought you knew me better than that, Josh.”

And he does. He keeps petting Abby, not trusting what his face might decide to tell Donna if he turns around.

“Put on your tie so we can leave,” Donna instructs him. “It’s on your pillow. I don’t want to be late for the senior staff meeting.”

He pats Abby firmly and gets to his feet, heading to the tie and trying to wipe the pride off his face. His Donna, in less than four years gone from the girl with no credentials or experience who hired herself to the woman attending senior staff meetings and advising the President and bullying senators as effectively as Josh himself. He gets it under control and turns around just as he’s flipping the wider part of the tie over the skinny part. He freezes, the tie flopping uselessly over his knuckles.

“Donna?”

“Need help?” She sets the two … things … on top of his dresser and comes up to him, swatting his hands out of the way and taking control of the tie.

“What are those?” he asks in a voice that should have been full of threat but ends up mellowed out because Donna’s so close, tying his tie for him in his bedroom, and there's a lot that’s right about this situation that he can’t look too closely at if he doesn’t want a panic attack this morning on top of the earlier flashback.

“You know what they are.”

He frowns. “I don’t own anything like that. How did those get into my house?”

“I brought them,” Donna answers with amusement not concealed at all. “You own them now.”

“No. No way. I do not. I—“ He looks down at his neatly tied tie and back up at Donna, still standing close to him. “You own them.”

“I won’t use them any time except here,” she counters. “In fact, I chose these two specifically to live here. Nothing pink, nothing flowery.” She steps away from him and crosses back to the dresser, picking up one of the offending items and offering it to him. He sniffs. Full of coffee. He takes it from her finally and looks closer at it. It’s a reusable to-go mug, and okay, it doesn’t look horrifying. He actually doesn’t have a problem with it now, especially because it’s already full of coffee, but he can’t back down.

“Okay. You own them, but they can lease a spot in my kitchen,” he decides.

Donna laughs so hard he has to rescue the other to-go coffee mug from her hand to save his bedroom carpet. “You are ridiculous,” she pronounces when she’s finally regained control. “Come on, let’s go. There’s cold pizza for breakfast if you’ll let me drive; I ate before I came over.”


End file.
